thank you :) perfect its sorted :) i just need to amend it slightly now as the last process in the update is "shipped" but i have coded it so that when the record gets updated to "shipped" it gets removed from the open-orders page and gets displayed in the closed-orders page but for some reason the email doesnt get sent to the customer to say its shipped - so im assumning that the update happens, the record disappears so there is nothing for the universal email behaviour to send. hmmmm :-\